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His easy camaraderie with the female hospital staff served to contrast starkly how stilted their enforced togetherness really was.
Fighting to keep a professional expression on her face, she shadowed Daniel, smiling at appropriate times, nodding when indicated, but inside she fought a hollowness that threatened to engulf her in darkness.
“How are you feeling, Ellen?” Daniel asked, entering a hospital room with Kimberly close behind him.
“Hungry,” the woman admitted from her bed. She had a sling on her arm to prevent movement from working the pacemaker loose. She’d wear the sling for a couple of days to keep her arm immobile.
“That’s a good sign.” Daniel flashed a smile that caused Kimberly’s heart to speed up.
So warm. So caring. A blessing to any patient who had the good fortune to have his services.
Seeing him, watching him work, assuaged any thoughts of whether or not she’d done the right thing in ensuring he went to medical school, of taking that small role in his success. Daniel was living out his dream.
“This is Kimberly Brookes.” He introduced her to his patient. “She
works for the medical equipment company that makes the pacemaker I placed in your chest this morning.”
Mrs. Mills’s gaze shot to her and Kimberly gave a friendly smile.
“She observed your procedure,” Daniel continued, crossing to stand next to the woman’s bed. He shook a short, overweight man’s hand, presumably that of Mr. Mills, then studied the heart monitor screen hooked up to Ellen. When satisfied, he put on his stethoscope and listened to her heart and lungs. “Everything sounds perfect,” he told his patient, then looked up at Kimberly. “Want to listen?”
Was he granting a peace offering or just doing his job? Regardless, she nodded. She took his stethoscope, trembled at the thought that she now held an extension of who Daniel was and placed the tips in her ears.
“May I?” she asked the patient, just to make sure Mrs. Mills didn’t mind.
The woman nodded. “The more who listen, the better chance nothing will be missed.”
Daniel gave a hearty laugh. “Good point, but I assure you that your heart is working better than it has in years.”
Kimberly placed the diaphragm against the woman’s chest, listening at all five of the crucial points. Steady rhythm, steady rate, with only an extra click giving notice that the pacemaker was there.
“Wonderful.” She smiled. “Thank you for letting me listen.”
“You’re welcome,” Daniel and Mrs. Mills answered simultaneously.
Daniel winked at his patient. “Great minds and all that.”
He quickly checked Mrs. Mills’s ankles and feet. Minimal swelling, Kimberly noted, but the woman had ulceration on her little toe that should be seen about by her family practitioner.
“Mrs. Mills, I’m going to ask for a podiatry consult for your feet,” Daniel said, closely checking between the woman’s toes.
Even better. Kimberly smiled again. Thorough to the end, even when the problem wasn’t directly related to what he was treating.
“I don’t like the look of the sore on your left little toe and you have some macerated skin between your toes on both feet.”
“They don’t bother me much. Just get sore occasionally.” The woman dismissed his concerns.
“Still…” he flashed another smile “…can’t have me fixing your heart and your feet slowing you down.”
Kimberly saw three other cardiac patients with him and accompanied him during a pre-op consultation for CRT placement with a sixty-nine-year-old barrel-chested woman named Sarah Allen, who’d opted to schedule the procedure for the following morning.
“Go over with me why I’m getting a pacemaker again,” the woman said, batting her lashes at Daniel in a blatantly flirtatious way.
Kimberly almost smiled.
“Basically,” Daniel explained, taking her wrinkled hand in his, “the electrical signal that tells your heart to contract is hitting the right side of your heart the way it should. But, in your case, it moves to the left side too slowly. This causes the four heart chambers to contract out of sync. When the out-of-rhythm chambers contract, blood isn’t pumped efficiently through your body. This leaves your body hungry for oxygen.”
“And this pacemaker will make my heart chambers work together again?”
